1st shift
I’m posting this a little late, but better late than never I suppose. My first shift was actually a very interesting one, because the assignment I was given working downstairs in the museum was to research the ethnic history of a local city. I am from Atascadero, which for those of you who don’t know is about a 15 minute drive over the grade, so it was really interesting to be able to do research on my own town. It turns out Atascadero was founded to be a “white utopia” essentially, which really doesn’t surprise me considering the white population there, but it was definitely disappointing to discover this. One of the people doing research downstairs as well was from a museum in Santa Margarita, which is right next to Atascadero, and she was telling me how the founder of Atascadero once threw a Japanese man in jail, and when he was asked why the man was sent to jail, he responding, “For being a Jap.” Through my research all I could really find was similar stories confirming the founder’s racism, against more than just the Japanese, and also that there were active members of the Ku Klux Klan present in Atascadero at one point. This was, as you might expect, very upsetting to hear about my hometown.
-Tyler Hushing-Kline
3rd shift
- Alex Hung
Michael Cafuir, offsite!!! Feb 27
hey all again, I’m posting both of them up today because it’s pretty much due.
Okay, for the 2nd shift, i worked at the Museum, but i was still doing the offsite work. This time my job was to number the negatives, while writing down what I see in the negative. I reached about 120 negatives during this shift. The cookies that Kimberly provided were DELISH!!! All the negatives were wedding photos. Brian did the same shift as me again, except he did some photo scanning. A few hours later, other students started coming to the museum. All the students downstairs were separated and had their own job.
Same questions as the first post.
Michael Cafuir, offsite!!! Feb 13
hey guys i know its really late but i finally got access to post a blog by using someone else’s account.
My shift was at the offsite and what i did when i got there was get a little tour of the place when brian arrived. Kimberly showed us the Photos and Materials that were packed by previous students before us. They finished packing most of the Ah Louis family’s belongings. The boxes that were left for Brian and I were Gin Louis’s photography shots. We finished 5-6 boxes by the end of this shift. The contents inside were mostly family, baby, wedding, toddler, and some young adult male and female photos. Brain and I did however find one picture that looked like two people that we knew.
A couple questions I have are: What are we suppose to learn about photos that Gin Louis took, other than seeing that he loves to take pictures? How are we suppose to learn about the museum by looking at photos?
3rd Shift
Shift 3: March 3, 10-2PM
My last shift of photo scanning, again started out just like the other two; walking in while kimberly was in another meeting. Apparently the slide scanner wasn’t in the museum, so I started the day off labeling and describing the slides. All of the slides were of some “American Bicentenial Revolution” monument. After finishing off the slides, I proceeded to scan a second box full of negatives taken by Gin Louis. Nothing really interesting in this set of photos except a for a few taken of girl who was auditioning for “Tiger Tales”. The rest of the photos were of weddings, and seemed like they were duplicates of the photos I had scanned in my previous shift. While scanning the photos, every now and then I would over hear the meeting talking about some origins project and of a picture that they were going to hang over a door. Also while scanning the photos, I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to write my final paper on; all I had done these three shifts was scan photos. My last shift was done, and overall I had scanned some 300 photos, all of which were some way interesting. The day ended with Kimberley thanking me for volunteering and giving me a t-shirt, mug, bookmark, and a calendar.
- Alex Hung
Shift V — Last shift 3/5
Today I completed my final shift at the museum. It was pretty slow in terms of visitors (Wednesday afternoon after all) but some other students from ES244 came in researching for their papers. I spent most of the hour chatting with Anita at the desk waiting for more visitors to arrive.
Shift IV — 3/2/08
For some reason, I thought that the museum closed at 5 o’clock. Thus, I only worked 3 out of my remaining 4 hours on this day. Myself, Dan and Suzi were all volunteering upstairs and we had some interesting conversation about guitars, music and the book about central coast shipwrecks that we found on the shelf. Leon joined us and we discussed local blues music and travelling. Overall, a very enjoyable shift at the docent desk.
last shift
so on Sunday I had my last shift with two other docents James and Susan? pretty slow for a Sunday but we managed to pass the time by discussing the arts and how to make guitar effect pedals. Overall my experiences at the museum were much more fun than I anticipated and listening to Leons stories about traveling to Czechoslovakia was inspiring.
Dan Tedrow
Brian Kwa! OFF SITE! but really on site!
UPDATE! The photos that I was going through at the off site storage were labeled “Gin Louis” and were thought to be from Gin Louis. In truth, Gin was like Young Louis’ wife or Gin is some girl who kept these photos???!?? and all those photos were taken by Young Louis’ at his photo studio in SLO. It’s all so clear now!
UPDATE! People who work at the SLOCHS READ THESE POSTS!
OK, so apparently Kimberly did forget about Mike and me the last time I tried to volunteer at the off site storage. It’s OK with me because she got promoted to be a really important boss type position. They’re doing a lot of reorganizing/reconstructing over at SLOCHS. I know it can be hectic and kids can get lost. It’s OK!
Instead of going to the off site storage, Kimberly told me to do some work at the museum. I finished my remaining hours in the downstairs research room area scanning in photos. These photos were personal pictures taken by Young Louis. Here are some things I noticed:
- Pictures taken in the 1940s? All Black and White
- Most of the pictures were taken outdoors and the people were doing outdoor activities like, boating, playing in a park, or chilling at the beach
- Mostly Asian people with 1 or 2 photographs of Caucasian friends
- No traditional Chinese garments; all Western style clothing
- Men wore suits and women wore dresses, no questions asked
It seemed like Young Louis was an outdoors loving, popular with the Asians, American guy. I must have scanned 400 pictures and this conclusion holds true. I think these photos are a good clue to who Young Louis was. It was like going through a time machine and “WHOOPS! HEY IT’S YOUNG LOUIS! WADDUP, MAN!”
There was one photo that stood out to me and I will probably never forget. It was a photo of 3 Asian guys in 3-piece suits, standing in front of a nice car. These guys were young, confident, charismatic-looking, handsome guys. They were Triad status, or just plain ballin’. I want to be just like them. I can imagine all the ladies falling for them. I can imagine them taking any and all women and wooing them on the dance floor. Women love them and the men want to be them. Despite the envy, men respect them. These three amigos were an unstoppable trio, held together by indestructible bonds of brotherhood forged by overcoming challenges and adversity. These three men were the godfathers of SLO. OH MAN YOUNG LOUIS IS SIIIICKK!
I’ll definitely do more work for the SLOCHS in the future. I think it was a pretty interesting experience and the museum provides some bomb cookies. w00t w00t!
Third Shift – 03/02/2008
I volunteered my last four hours today as a docent. It was only Leon and I today, but that’s cool because he and I had some interesting conversations. For the morning shift we had about 30 people come in. I learned from my second shift that the museum gets money from grants when they say how many people come in and such. I didn’t have to walk around taking notes anymore because I had already done everything during my second shift. Leon and I were talking about Alzheimer’s and I told him something I learned in my Nutrition class. A study done on women at a prestigious university (I forget the name, Carnegie Mellon perhaps?) showed that by drinking coffee for a good portion of their lives, Alzheimer’s can be pushed back 10 or 11 years. I suppose you gain some, you lose some — in this case gain caffeine, lose Alzheimer’s. Leon told me that he was a strong addict to coffee. Props to him. Hopefully, Alzheimer’s will not get to him even though it runs in his family and his wife’s. Currently I am not addicted to coffee, but maybe sometime later on in life I will be. There was also a couple that were on their way up to San Francisco. They came from Denmark and spoke English with a German accent. I know this because I took German for two years under an almost nazi-wannabe German teacher and also here at Poly for one quarter. I am really interested in going to Germany because of BMWs. They’re my favorite car and I cannot wait to drive a real BMW, not an American de-modified version of one (even though I do L-O-V-E the BMW I’m driving now..but still). Anyways back to my volunteering. I decided to bust out my German to them and tell them about some sites to see in San Francisco since I’m from there. Thank goodness they understood me haha!! It just really amazes me how people from different countries know about this museum and its history and I had no idea until I took ES 244. Well I would say my last shift at the Historical Society was very eventful and it definitely flew by. — Lisa Deng
